Patricia Arquette: It's time for gay people to fight for women's rights

[Her]

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After her Oscar win, Patricia Arquette urged gay people to fight for women's rights as a means to return the favour for fighting for LGBT rights.

The Oscars was not just a night for the big winners to collect the coveted awards, many used their win to give impassioned speeches about political issues. Patricia Arquette was one of the stars who chose to speak about women's rights.

Arquette, who won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in Boyhood, called on gay people and people from ethnic minorities to join the fight for women's rights. She claimed that women had fought for their rights and it was time that they helped fight for women.
During her acceptance speech, which was met with an excited reaction from Meryl Streep, Arquette called on support for her cause, claiming women had "fought for everybody else's equal rights."

Speaking backstage at the ceremony, she said: "The truth is, even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America, right under the surface, there are huge issues that are applied that really do affect women. And it's time for all the women in America and all the men that love women, and all the gay people, and all the people of colour that we've all fought for to fight for us now."

The actress has been criticised for her comments. Many who were following the show on Twitter claimed she ignored the unique struggles of women who are from ethnic minorities and LGBT.

One Twitter user said: "Nobody tell Patricia Arquette about all the queer women of colour that exist or her brain might explode."

Arquette said she didn't understand why "we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and we don't have equal rights for women in America."
Some people have mocked Arquette's speech, saying it was trivial and ignored the struggles of other minority groups.

Recently, Patricia Arquette praised Bruce Jenner for being brave for their transition. Arquette's sister is a trans woman and the actress said her sister taught her a lot about love.

Note that at the time of posting this, I haven't watched a video of the speech and haven't looked into it that much as of yet. Nevertheless, what do you make of these comments?

 

[Chikara]

I think that her intentions were in the right place, but her words and reasons were not.

People should be fighting for women's rights because that's the right thing to do, not because "y'all owe us". It almost implies that the lgbt+ movement is insignificant compared to women's rights.

BUT LIKE I SAID, I think she meant perfectly well, she just conveyed her thoughts in a way that twitter didn't take kindly to.

 

[Flushed]

I wasn't completely sure how to feel about this, so I read an article or two for some more insight and the point brought up that resonated with me most is that it's almost as if she's implying that the fight for LGBT rights is over; the "we helped you win your battle, now help us win ours" mentality isn't exactly the best mindset when the fight isn't over.

Pretty much just mirroring Chikara at this point. Championing her cause on such a huge stage? Admirable, sure, but she could've went about the whole thing in an entirely better manner, I think.

 

[Grey Wind]

Agreeing with the above. I applaud her for taking a very public stand, but her choice of words is rather off-putting. The whole "we helped you, now you help us" is almost... accusative, and seems to imply that those fights are over and that intersectionality isn't a thing.

Good message, bad wording.

 

[CoffeeDrink]

This is a stupid argument. 'We helped fight for your rights. You're obligated to fight for ours.' and that's not including the women that have and take issue with the lgbt communities as a whole. So she's saying that women as a whole fought for everyone's rights. This is a goddawful statement for her to have made, and without actually seeing how she sounds on the video, she comes off pretty pretentious and presumptuous on paper so I know I'm not the only one who is going to see it that way. The fact that she's calling for aid is simply off-putting. While technically there aren't many laws that state out factually that women can't do 'this' or women can't do 'that' but there are laws that state that LGBTs can't do several things, like marriage for example. Then there is the thought of making transgender people requiring licenses to pee. . . I think it was just too soon for her to make a statement like this. Perhaps if she stated 'equal rights to everyone' it would have been better received, but the battle for rights of LGBT citizens is far from won. When we [the US] stop having 'mainstream' Christian and/or religious rallies calling out the LGBTs as freaks of nature or 'wrong' I'll consider those fights for rights on the road to success, but we still have hating on gays and 'god hates fignewtons' weirdos running around and people that nod their head and agree with them. If someone can point out to me specific rights men get that women don't, please point some out to me. And these have to be something that isn't trivial, actual civil rights.

Also, George Takei.

 

[Sydian]

I don't think any group is entitled to help fight for another group's rights, but I think her message wasn't ill intentioned and still had her heart in the right place. Just badly worded. Let's be honest, if any of us were up on that stage getting an Oscar and trying to get out some speech, we might mess up something too. I do that on a regular basis without a stage. lol

also didn't bruce jenner kill someone in a car wreck recently or am i thinking of someone else

 

[Aeroblast]

In the speech it almost sounds like these rights movements are nothing more than some business transactions. I'm pretty sure she didn't mean that but it sounds so off.

All in all, nothing here that others haven't said before.

 

[Livewire]

I don't think it would be seen as such a problem had the Oscars not already caught so much flak for the lack of diversity, etc. The Sound of Music tribute was great and all but given that it's 50 years since Selma and civil rights, and Selma the film was basically railroaded by the academy, it was like the spark that lit the fire. All it takes is once little occurrence taken out of context or blown out of proportion and boom, controversy. I do think she had noble intentions and was trying to preach that we needed to band together to fight injustices, but it just came out weird, was all.

 

[Entermaid]

Patricia Arquette doesn't really understand the gender gap issue.

Controlling for age (and therefore experience) in the medical field for instance shows that women are more sought after and are offered higher starting salaries. Female doctors compared to male doctors with similar years of experience and educational background, tend to make MORE money. This is observed in many other professional fields. However, if you compare simply by field without looking at age, men make more. This is simply a lagging effect that needs to be controlled for, since men tended to dominate the medical field, and therefore there are older men with more experience that maintain higher wages.

The factoid that has been recited by her and other about the 77 or 78 cents per 1 dollar doesn't even account for occupation, position, experience, age, ect, ect, ect. Rather, it's an average of wages and doesn't account for lagging effects.

The same can be said for blacks tending to have poor turn-out. That is a myth. If you control for income, blacks are the most politically active and participatory group in the United States. That is, we are trying to control for the effects of low-income in the model so we have a better understanding of ethnic coalitions and their instrumentality in voting behavior. We care about ethnicity/race and we don't care about poverty...so we need to get rid of it from the theoretical model by using controls. Same with age, occupation, experience, and lagging effects from gender in measuring the determinants of salary/wages.

Controls are important, and social researchers remain in the minority as far as understanding their importance in measurement accuracy.

Patricia and other politicians and celebs that rely upon manipulation of simpleton masses, both liberal and conservative, can continue to report on statistics with no theoretical basis for their methodology and data collection/interpretation.

Oh, I haven't even begun to address the topic, which is, the gay-women alliance. But do I really need to point out how idiotic she sounds?

She's a great actress, and I loved Boyhood, but she should really become a social scientist before she tries to advocate policy. It's not her expertise.

 

[gimmepie]

It's two in the morning so I'll get a proper post up later. I'm going to pretty much just make a few points.

1. As others have said, minority groups that are still going through far worse stigmas than women don't owe women anything. Especially because the vast majority of women on the planet actually haven't done anything towards LGBT rights (nor most men for the record).

2. Can we stop acting like there's some huge plot against women in Western society? There isn't. Women are honestly no worse off than men, it's just that idiotic feminist groups are far too vocal about problems they imagine. Even ignoring that though I have an amazing idea. Let's not stand up for gay rights, or women's rights, or ethnic rights or any other specific cause like that. Why don't we stand up for equality for everyone?

 

[Lotus the Cat]

Patricia Arquette doesn't really understand the gender gap issue.

Controlling for age (and therefore experience) in the medical field for instance shows that women are more sought after and are offered higher starting salaries. Female doctors compared to male doctors with similar years of experience and educational background, tend to make MORE money. This is observed in many other professional fields. However, if you compare simply by field without looking at age, men make more. This is simply a lagging effect that needs to be controlled for, since men tended to dominate the medical field, and therefore there are older men with more experience that maintain higher wages.

Using one industry to dismiss the gender pay gap is very misleading. There have been numerous studies that, even controlling for other factors, show a discrepancy in pay between men and women doing the same work. The degree of this is different depending on industry but it certainly exists in the private sector.

The pay gap is only one part of the problem. Women are often forced to choose between having a career and a family, a sacrifice men still don't have to face.

Wikipedia references a few studies here. And there's also a news article about it here, specifically mentioning the Oscar speech.

 

[gimmepie]

The pay gap is only one part of the problem. Women are often forced to choose between having a career and a family, a sacrifice men still don't have to face.

Because there are no men who choose to stay at home and look after their children or families with two working parents.

 

[Oloolooloo!]

As a person who supports LGBT and women's rights, I absolutely HATE this statement. When you sling stupid, you just end up radicalizing everyone and hurting your cause more than you help it. There are plenty of people with reasonable arguments that introduce their palms to their face at stuff like this, regardless of whether it's women's rights, LGBT rights, or something entirely different. And let's not forget Patricia Arquette could just be misinformed, have cracked under pressure, or be trying to get publicity. It brings up a good debate, but this comment isn't exactly making the world a better place.

As for the pay gap, it's not something I can have a confident opinion about. Plenty of stats exist for both sides (most of them skewered for one reason or another), and each side has an argument that holds up. If I see a women being discriminated because of her gender, I'm going to get pissed. But I'm also going to get just as pissed if I see a women who thinks of themselves as superior to men. It's at a narrow enough margin that someone's personal experience could show that women don't have the rights men do, but someone else could see that women are just as accepted as men.

 

[Her]

Because there are no men who choose to stay at home and look after their children or families with two working parents.

Don't be flippant. Her point is valid, it just shouldn't have been laid out as an absolute, as there are of course men who are faced with that situation. But nowhere on the same scale as women.

 

[gimmepie]

As a person who supports LGBT and women's rights, I absolutely HATE this statement. When you sling stupid, you just end up radicalizing everyone and hurting your cause more than you help it. There are plenty of people with reasonable arguments that introduce their palms to their face at stuff like this, regardless of whether it's women's rights, LGBT rights, or something entirely different. And let's not forget Patricia Arquette could just be misinformed, have cracked under pressure, or be trying to get publicity. It brings up a good debate, but this comment isn't exactly making the world a better place.

As for the pay gap, it's not something I can have a confident opinion about. Plenty of stats exist for both sides (most of them skewered for one reason or another), and each side has an argument that holds up. If I see a women being discriminated because of her gender, I'm going to get pissed. But I'm also going to get just as pissed if I see a women who thinks of themselves as superior to men. It's at a narrow enough margin that someone's personal experience could show that women don't have the rights men do, but someone else could see that women are just as accepted as men.

I don't think there's much of a problem with either gender feeling superior to be honest with you. Rather the biggest problem is that there's a very vocal group of people claiming that one gender thinks themselves superior.

Don't be flippant. Her point is valid, it just shouldn't have been laid out as an absolute, as there are of course men who are faced with that situation. But nowhere on the same scale as women.

I probably could have been nicer I admit, but that doesn't change the fact that she's quite wrong. There are plenty of families with two working parents and there's nothing forcing a woman to be the one who stays at home. I'd suggest in those circumstances it is the woman's perception that is the problem rather than the attitude of the man, or quite frankly the man could just be the more stubborn partner.

 

[Oloolooloo!]

I don't think there's much of a problem with either gender feeling superior to be honest with you. Rather the biggest problem is that there's a very vocal group of people claiming that one gender thinks themselves superior.

Very true.

Don't be flippant. Her point is valid, it just shouldn't have been laid out as an absolute, as there are of course men who are faced with that situation. But nowhere on the same scale as women.

I'd like to counter your argument, but you don't say how is it that her point is valid. If you manage to pick apart the entire opposition's argument then you don't have any more evidence then they do. You gotta give me more to work on, man.

 

[Lotus the Cat]

I probably could have been nicer I admit, but that doesn't change the fact that she's quite wrong. There are plenty of families with two working parents and there's nothing forcing a woman to be the one who stays at home. I'd suggest in those circumstances it is the woman's perception that is the problem rather than the attitude of the man, or quite frankly the man could just be the more stubborn partner.

I was actually referring to earlier points in the process. It's typically only after 6 months (standard time off taken, some women take up to 12 months though) of maternity leave before the stage where men might take over some responsibility. The father could probably take over sooner, but you need to realise that giving birth to a child is not easy and it requires time to physically recover. Regardless of the good intentions of the male in this case, the female will always require leave from work for such a period that may jeorpardise career opportunities.

Coming back to work after such a time away can be difficult. Women returning to work from maternity leave can face discrimination. I typed "Discrimination after" into Google, the second result was "Discrimination after maternity leave".

Also, what if your job is physical? Getting pregnant is going to greatly impact what you can and cannot do at work. For example, I sometimes undertake inspections at wastewater treatment plants at work, which if I were pregnant I would no longer be able to do. Excessive excercise or physical strain is also something that needs to be avoided during pregnancy, which excludes most other site works. This means I may miss out on opportunities to work on projects that will be good for my career for 9 months. Hell, I might even avoid getting involved in "riskier" projects while I'm just trying to get pregnant because by the time you know you're pregnant it is possible that you could do have done some damage to the fetus. So really, that could extend the 9 months indefinitely (depending on how many months - or years - it can take to get pregnant in the first place).

What it boils down to is that women have to make a sacrifice.

 

[Entermaid]

Using one industry to dismiss the gender pay gap is very misleading. There have been numerous studies that, even controlling for other factors, show a discrepancy in pay between men and women doing the same work. The degree of this is different depending on industry but it certainly exists in the private sector.

The pay gap is only one part of the problem. Women are often forced to choose between having a career and a family, a sacrifice men still don't have to face.

Wikipedia references a few studies here. And there's also a news article about it here, specifically mentioning the Oscar speech.

Well, actually I use that specific example as a prototype. The field of Surgeons and physicians is notorious for its reputation as perpetrating gender stereotyping and wage disparities among men and women, since most analysis hasn't controlled for age/experience/lagging effects, and only reflects median wages. Even studies that control for age and experience, then fail to address lagging effects. Meaning, if we cluster a group of people together and then control for age, we still have failed to address the other lagging effects of structural changes over time. However, only very recently have social scientists investigated this claim with the controls I mentioned. And even in the one field that once was considered the most bias, "holding all things equal" a woman with the same experience, degree, institution, ect makes more money.

The article provided said that it uses median salaries, and not mention of control variables. And as expected reported the medical field as being the most biased among men and women.

For instance, here is a graph of the gender gap as it has narrowed in the United States.

Notice when we eliminate the older group of Americans, we see much less of a wage gap? Further, the gap between young women and older women is growing in relation to the median incomes. This graph doesn't even show the continuing trend of the past 2 years. Eliminating older population and then comparing helps alleviate the lagging effects issue that other reports tend not to do since it is more theoretically driven and requires a more sophisticated method of measurement. Though, like I said, comparing dummy groups, by age, contains those effects. The report you've cited doesn't disseminate employ any of the methods listed and is lacking in theoretical modeling to say the least.

In the past few years, the age gap of young professionals is less than 5% and continues to trend in a converging fashion. Notice why doctors would seem to have the greatest wage disparity? Look at the falling wages of young men entering the work force versus women. Those men that are older, maintain their higher wages, whereas the young men in the medical field has dropped below young women. Essentially the imminent convergence in the graph of all industries has already been met and far exceeded in the medical field as well as others.

Do we need policies to change the rates of change observed above? If you project the next 10 years of the young adult age group of mid-twenties to mid-thirties, if policies remain the same, women will be making significantly more on average across industry. Is she not satisfied with the rate in change? I hardly think she is knowledgeable of it.

 

[gimmepie]

I was actually referring to earlier points in the process. It's typically only after 6 months (standard time off taken, some women take up to 12 months though) of maternity leave before the stage where men might take over some responsibility. The father could probably take over sooner, but you need to realise that giving birth to a child is not easy and it requires time to physically recover. Regardless of the good intentions of the male in this case, the female will always require leave from work for such a period that may jeorpardise career opportunities.

Coming back to work after such a time away can be difficult. Women returning to work from maternity leave can face discrimination. I typed "Discrimination after" into Google, the second result was "Discrimination after maternity leave".

Also, what if your job is physical? Getting pregnant is going to greatly impact what you can and cannot do at work. For example, I sometimes undertake inspections at wastewater treatment plants at work, which if I were pregnant I would no longer be able to do. Excessive excercise or physical strain is also something that needs to be avoided during pregnancy, which excludes most other site works. This means I may miss out on opportunities to work on projects that will be good for my career for 9 months. Hell, I might even avoid getting involved in "riskier" projects while I'm just trying to get pregnant because by the time you know you're pregnant it is possible that you could do have done some damage to the fetus. So really, that could extend the 9 months indefinitely (depending on how many months - or years - it can take to get pregnant in the first place).

What it boils down to is that women have to make a sacrifice.

That's still not a matter of women being forced to bare children intend of choose a career. It's called responsible thinking and making a choice. It's not the fault of men that they can't get pregnant, so it makes sense that women might have to display some responsibility when choosing work whilst pregnant or trying to become pregnant. Nobody is forcing those women to have babies.

Also remember that if the father chose to stay home with the baby he couldn't get any form of financial support, paternity leave isn't a thing. Before you say it doesn't need to be since women generally can't physically return to work, in the UK the minimum is given as two weeks after delivery with it being even sooner in France. On top of that I have known several dance coaches - who are extremely active - who have worked pretty much right up to labour and have returned to work after only about a month.

 

[Lotus the Cat]

words

You need to be very careful in the way that you decide to interpret the data on the gender pay gap. Statistics released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics listed the gender pay gap at around 18%, which has increased since 2004. This is based on average weekly full time equivalent earnings. There are obviously limitations to this information as it does not:

• Account for differing age groups
• Account for experience
• Account for position.

Therefore you may dismiss this data for not having sufficient controls. What it appears you value as appropriate presentation of the data is pay that distills age groups (regardless of relative experience) and position. The problem with this, and I will touch on this later, is that it fails to address possible gender issues relating to women in high paying positions in companies (e.g. CEOs or other higher level managers).

The Bureau also provided a breakdown of pay at various age groups, which agrees with your data that the gap is insignificant in younger age groups (in this case 15 to 19 years) and increases at greater age groups before decreasing at retirement ages. However, just because the gap is smaller in younger age groups doesn't mean that there is a lagging effect and that when those 15 year olds are 35 the same gap they experienced at 15 will exist. Chances are by the time they're 35 some of the to factors I mention below will mean they earn less than their male counterpart.

The average weekly full-time equivalent earnings provides us with useful information in the following way:

• The larger than expected gap (versus if you were to compare men and women in the exact same role) in each industry suggests that less women hold the higher earning positions within companies.

These reports also show that female dominated careers are also less paid in general - but that's not really relevant here.

The point above begs the question - why?

This might be due to one or numerous of the following:

1. A lot of this has to do with flexibility in the workplace. Despite what gimmiepie likes to think women still bare the majority of caring responsibilities when they have children. Women who return to work after maternity leave will mostly do so part time. This limits their effective "experience" and therefore promotion. As a result by the time they return to full time work they may be earning less than their male counterpart.
2. Employers may not accommodate flexible working arrangements and women may change career, starting at a lower base
3. Women who return from maternity leave may face discrimination, including demotion (which while illegal does happen)
4. The role performed by the woman may be made redundant without consultation while she is on maternity leave, which may lead to the above
5. The cost of childcare may outrun work earnings making it less economical to remain in the work force until the child is school age. See point 1 for flow on effects.
6. Young women may be perceived as a pregnancy risk and may have their chances for promotion into critical roles limited.

You would be naive to think that discrimination doesn't occur. Maternity leave costs companies money - both directly in payments and in training of replacement staff.

Also, with regards to the the graph you show of women's wages rising and men's falling: that's exactly what we want to see. The way you word your comment you make it out as though the falling average wage for men is a bad thing when instead you should be focusing on the fact that they're approaching each other. If the trend continues then they will eventually equalise (with some acceptable fluctuation), which is precisely what we want to see. If women's wages exceed men's by a significant amount then we need to push the fight the other way. Until they are at equilibrium there is nothing wrong with keeping the issue in the social consciousness.

Please note I am not pushing for change in policy but ignoring what is still a problem is counterproductive.

other words

Gimmiepie, while you have your experience with people you know I have mine and without knowing more the fact that you know women who returned to work after 1 month by no means trumps my arguments. How soon a new mother returns to work can depend on a number of factors, including:

• Whether their work can accommodate flexible working arrangements
• Friend and family support network (e.g. having retired parents makes babysitting arrangements a lot easier)
• Access to childcare - in some inner city suburbs waiting lists can be more than 9 months
• Their partners working arrangements vs their own. e.g. at home while mother works
• Finances - sometimes you need to return sooner because you can't afford not to. The mother may not be entitled to company paid maternity leave for example

It's very likely that your acquaintances could tick some of those items off. I'm going to make some assumptions that as a dance instructor they have flexible working hours and probably work in the evening when their partner is probably home. I highly doubt they are accessing childcare as at 1 month old the only vaccination they get is the first hep B vaccine so sending to childcare (particularly with all these anti vaccinators around) is dangerous for the babies health. Mm, whooping cough and measles.

Also, 18 weeks of government paid parental leave is awarded to the primary carer for a newborn or adopted child. Therefore, men are eligible.

In the end, ignoring the fact that by playing the role of primary carer (which, let's face it, is considered the social norm) the career and life earnings of women suffers, also hurts the chances of change being made to enable father's to take more ownership in that role.